The Lexmark C910dn is far and away the most expensive printer in this roundup, costing nearly 50 percent more than the next-most-expensive choice. What you get for that price is the lowest claimed cost per color page among the printers we evaluated, as well as much heavier-duty paper-handling capabilities, in both the basic unit and the available options.

The standard paper input capacity for the C910dn is 1,200 sheetsroughly double that of every other color printer we evaluated. Its maximum input capacity is 5,300 sheets. And this unit is the only color printer we reviewed with an optional finisher, which includes stapling, hole-punch, and offset-stacking capabilities. If you need this level of paper handling, the odds are good that you print enough for the lower cost per page to make a big difference. At a savings of 0.5 to 1 cent per color page, printing 6,000 color pages per month would save you $360 to $720 per year.

The high price also includes physical setupa welcome extra, since you probably won't want to wrestle with this 237-pound behemoth by yourself. The bundled network setup, IPP setup, and administrative tools are identical to those that come with the monochrome Lexmark T620dn, and significantly less automated than the HP and Xerox tools. You have to get the IP address from the printer and enter the numbers yourself, and you must decide whether to install the Lexmark printer port as part of the driver installation or later through the Driver Properties dialog box. If network printer administration isn't your primary job function, you may find this confusing.

The C910dn ranked second in overall speed among the color printers, but it was behind the first-place model by nearly 5 ppm. The Xerox Phaser 7300/DN is rated only 2 ppm faster (for color), but it was far faster on our speed tests. The Lexmark printer, averaging just 10.7 ppm on our tests, was closer to the performance of the HP Color LaserJet 5500dn, rated at 21 ppm and clocked at an average of 10.1 ppm.

The C910dn's print quality ranged from poor to excellent on our tests. But to the naked eye, photos were nearly film-quality, and text was well formed and easy to read. For graphics, colors were suitably saturated and brilliant. We saw no problems with registration, which was an issue with early LED engines. This unit ranked third overall among the color printers in our quality analysis; we noted some background and scatter problems, but output showed excellent solid-area uniformity, a measure of variation in the amount of toner applied to solid areas.

In the end, the C910dn is in a class by itself. If you won't be printing enough pages to take advantage of the heavy-duty paper capacity and the cost-per-page savings, there's no reason to consider it. But if you do expect to print enough pages, those two featurescombined with the good-looking output and acceptable performanceare enough to justify the price.

M. David Stone is an award-winning freelance writer and computer industry consultant. Although a confirmed generalist, with writing credits on subjects as varied as ape language experiments, politics, quantum physics, and an overview of a top company in the gaming industry. David is also an expert in imaging technologies (including printers, monitors, large-screen displays, projectors, scanners, and digital cameras), storage (both magnetic and optical), and word processing. He is a recognized expert on printers, well known within the industry, and has been a judge for...
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